[rights] RE: W3C ODRL and XMCL Announcements

[John Erickson <john_erickson@hplb.hpl.hp.com>]

Karl writes:

> OASIS would like to be able to comment on the
> attached W3C announcement, and needs a consensus
> opinion from the RLTC before we do so.

JSE: It should be noted that these W3C announcements only acknowledge the
submissions of ODRL and XMCL specs. At most they can be interpreted as a
reflection of continued watchfulness by W3C over this domain, dating back to
long before the W3C DRM Workshop in early '01. W3C still has not chosen to
support activity in this area, in part because the desired focus of its
membership in such an activity has been unclear, especially given W3C's broad
charter.

Rigo provided commentary on the submissions, including his team's concerns (an
reflective of the W3C's broader social agenda) at:
http://www.w3.org/Submission/2002/06/Comment


Note especially the following: "...There are many Activities around DRM in
different Standards bodies and Consortia around the world. MPEG is integrating
DRM into MPEG-4, MPEG-7 and MPEG-21, CEN/ISSS has a Steering Group around DRM.
OASIS just opened a Technical Committee on DRM to create a rights-language and
Content-guard provided XrML as a contribution. None of the above mentioned
initiatives federate all the stakeholders and interested parties around one
table. The library community, new initiatives like the Creative Commons, like
Project Gutenberg or consumer-protection associations offer welcome user
perspectives too often missing from the technical design discussions of rights
management systems. During the DRM-Workshop stakeholders asked W3C to help
coordinate this broad variety of initiatives. This was partly done with the
Workshop and the www-drm mailing-list..."

Karl's questions, in detail:

> How does this proposed work relate to the work
> being pursued by the RLTC? Is it duplicative or
> merely similar? Can we tell W3C that this
> work is already being pursued at OASIS?

There is no proposed W3C activity that I know of. However, possible paths that
W3C could take might be:

* do nothing (and continue observing the space);

* pursue an alternative REL focussing on use-rights enforcement, building on
e.g. ODRL, XMCL and other potential submissions, presumably in accordance with
its charter;

* pursue a more expressive REL, for example capturing the bi-directional nature
of real copyright interchange, issues of internationality, and other
public-interest concerns;

* pursue mechanisms for rights modelling that would occupy a higher level,
perhaps leveraging RDF);

* pursue a more metadata-like model of conveying IPR information, perhaps along
the lines of Creative Commons;

* pursue an REL-agnostic rights messaging protocol, possibly in concert with one
or more of the above...

The most that RLTC can say is that it currently has a TC that is building on one
particular rights language, XrML 2.1. It *cannot* say, for example, that it is a
standard, only that it has a TC that hopes to create one...

| John S. Erickson, Ph.D.
| Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
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